


Marta, My Dear

by SegaBarrett



Category: Knives Out (2019)
Genre: Backstory, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:00:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22538179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: Marta meets a new, unusual patient.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 70
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	Marta, My Dear

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Grundy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grundy/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I do not own Knives Out, and I make no money from this.

Harlan Thromby hadn’t said a word in fifteen minutes, had simply looked at Marta with his head cocked to the side. Marta looked right back at him, mainly because she didn’t know what else to do. Her agency had sent her to patient after patient, and each of them had had their quirks. Just because Harlan was the first famous one didn’t make him any different.

Just a little more intimidating, if Marta was being completely honest with herself. The man had a lot of power.

She didn’t know what having a lot of power would feel like. She couldn’t quite conceive what she might do with it. She would make things better for her mother and sister, of course – that had been her aim since she had been old enough to see over a counter, to work, to help out back when her mother had had a store and that had been what had kept food on their table. Then it had been Marta herself.

Marta cocked her own head to the side and looked at Harlan. He must have been studying her – that must be what he did, right? He was a mystery writer, that much made sense. 

“You look frustrated,” she said finally, venturing a guess. Either he fed up with having to hire a nurse in the first place, or he just plain hated her and wanted her to go away. Either way, she didn’t think she could stand it if she just stayed in this staring match until the end of time. She would be the one who cracked first, no doubt.

“I am,” Harlan replied, and Marta’s shoulders slumped into the largest sigh she had ever given. “My family are idiots and they think I’m an idiot too.” 

“Sounds a bit harsh.”

“You haven’t met them yet.”

***

“I’m so proud of you, Marta,” her mother told her, off and on the entire morning that she prepared to start her life in the employ of Harlan Thromby. She’d spent the last three days reading as many of his books as she could get her hands on, piling them up and reading a chapter here of one and a chapter there of another the way she had when she was back in high school.

The man seemed to spend his days thinking up ways that people kill one another and then attempt to get away with it, which seemed a very dark cloud to be sitting under all the time. 

“I wouldn’t trust anyone if that was what I did all day,” she mused. “I’m pretty sure I would see dangers around every corner.”

“Well, yeah. But then nothing would ever catch you by surprise!” Alicia exclaimed. “You won’t end up sending money to that guy who said his brother was trapped in space after the Soviet Union fell.”

Marta raised an eyebrow at Alicia and finishing pulling a comb through her hair, trying to stop it from shaking. She had been doing this for years – why should she be nervous? It was the same thing she’d done for three years at Quiet Meadows, and then at St. Fiacre’s, and then with old Mr. Lambert until he had passed on. None of those had been in a mansion with trap doors, though.

Worst of all, his entire family would be there, looking her up and down. She would need to prove herself.

***

“What made you want to get into this profession?” Harlan inquired, pulling a book out of the bookcase and letting it fall to the floor. Marta huffed, then sucked it back in – he was lucky that she wasn’t a neat-freak.

“I wanted to help people,” Marta replied, reaching down to pick the book back up before going back to measuring out a dose of Harlan’s medicine. 

“That’s a pat answer. You disappoint me, Marta.”

Marta smiled wryly and looked back at him.

“Okay. If you need more details… then I guess,” she began, then hesitated. What did he want to hear from her? What if she let too much slip and he decided he didn’t want to hire her after all? It was best to keep a screen up as far as possible.

“Well, everyone has backstory,” he said. “People make decisions based on who they are… and who they want to be.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Marta asked with a smile. “I want to be your nurse. I want to help you keep healthy.”

“My own family doesn’t want that,” Harlan replied, waving around his arm and letting out a quiet hiss. “They want me to make the calls that benefit them. Try again. What do you truly want?”

Marta paused, looked away, and knotted her fingers together. She shouldn’t be entertaining questions like this. They’d warned her about things like this in nursing school. They always said not to become friends with your patients. If you did, then you might go into a deep depression if anything happened to them.  
When something happened to them. It wasn’t a population that was really known for immortality.

And yet, she felt a pull to answer him, as she looked around the room and took in each and every book, and more than that, the fact that there seemed to be so few marks of Harlan’s children in the room. There was a photo in the corner and a stack of letters – from someone? – but the rest seemed to be some kind of cavern.

“I want to make my mother proud,” Marta said, even though it felt like the most canned response in the world, like she was competing for Miss Chile instead of measuring out doses of medicine. 

“What does she do?” Harlan inquired, turning his hand over and laying in flat on the desk, allowing Marta to give him the injection. The nerves were there, of course – this was someone new to figure out, someone who had a whole new rhyme and rhythm to them – but it was still easy, practiced, to where she had gotten used to giving injections while talking about (she smiled as she recalled) staff changes, politics, and what had ever happened to Tony Curtis.

“Well, she was a housekeeper for a while,” she replied, “To a young guy. He moved in with his family, though, and now she works from home for some company that takes flower orders. She sits with a headset on her head…” She mimicked it with her hand, a second after placing the hypodermic back in the sharps container. “And they do McDonalds, too. It’s all a little weird. But it lets her stay home.”

She wondered if Harlan was even listening to her. His head seemed to move, ever so slightly, not quite on a swivel but more like he was listening to the wind rustle in the trees or conducting an orchestra that was playing something at very low tempo. 

“Mr. Thromby?” Marta called, wondering if she had either bored him or if this was some symptom and she should be figuring out the logical treatment.

“You’re interesting,” he said instead, looking up at her. “What do you do in your free time?”

She raised and eyebrow and began to sigh, before he cut her off.

“That sounded as if I was asking you out. Let me rephrase. What are your hobbies?”

Marta chuckled.

“I like to read.”

“Have you read any of mine?”

“That’s a little narcissistic, you know. But yes, I have. I’m amazed how you manage to keep them all so different. A lot of mystery writers… they kind of fall into a kind of formula, where you can predict who did it from a mile away after you’ve read a few of their books.”

“And I don’t do that?”

“Well… Not yet.”

The smile was on her face before she even really realized it, and that was a little scary if she was honest. 

They had always warned her not to get attached, after all. 

She still remembered what her first nursing professor had said, her head tilted to the side and clicking her tongue when she talked: “Almost all of your patients are going to die, after all.”


End file.
